Late on Monday afternoon Lady Niton paid a call in Eaton Square.  She and Lady Lucy were very old friends, and rarely passed a week when they were both in town without seeing each other.

Mr. Ferrier lunched with her on Monday, and casually remarked that Lady Lucy was not as well as usual.  Lady Niton replied that she would look her up that afternoon; and she added:  “And what about that procrastinating fellow Oliver?  Is he engaged yet?”

“Not to my knowledge,” said Mr. Ferrier, after a pause.

“Then he ought to be!  What on earth is he shilly-shallying for?  In my days young men had proper blood in their veins.”

Ferrier did not pursue the subject, and Lady Niton at once jumped to the conclusion that something had happened.  By five o’clock she was in Eaton Square.

Only Alicia Drake was in the drawing-room when she was announced.

“I hear Lucy’s seedy,” said the old lady, abruptly, after vouchsafing a couple of fingers to Miss Drake.  “I suppose she’s been starving herself, as usual?”

Oliver’s mother enjoyed an appetite as fastidious as her judgments on men and morals, and Lady Niton had a running quarrel with her on the subject.

Alicia replied that it had been, indeed, unusually difficult of late to persuade Lady Lucy to eat.

“The less you eat the less you may eat,” said Lady Niton, with vigor.  “The stomach contracts unless you give it something to do.  That’s what’s the matter with Lucy, my dear—­though, of course, I never dare name the organ.  But I suppose she’s been worrying herself about something?”

“I am afraid she has.”

“Is Oliver engaged?” asked Lady Niton, suddenly, observing the young lady.

Alicia replied demurely that that question had perhaps better be addressed to Lady Lucy.

“What’s the matter?  Can’t the young people make up their minds?  Do they want Lucy to make them up for them?”

Alicia looked at her companion a little under her brows, and did not reply.  Lady Niton was so piqued by the girl’s expression that she immediately threw herself on the mystery she divined—­tearing and scratching at it, like a dog in a rabbit-hole.  And very soon she had dragged it to the light.  Miss Drake merely remarked that it was very sad, but it appeared that Miss Mallory was not really a Mallory at all, but the daughter of a certain Mrs. Sparling—­Juliet Sparling, who—­”

“Juliet Sparling!” cried Lady Niton, her queer small eyes starting in their sockets.  “My dear, you must be mad!”

Alicia smiled, though gravely.  She was afraid Lady Niton would find that what she said was true.

A cross-examination followed, after which Lady Niton sat speechless for a while.  She took a fan out of her large reticule and fanned herself, a proceeding by which she often protested against the temperature at which Lady Lucy kept her drawing-room.  She then asked for a window to be opened, and when she had been sufficiently oxygenated she delivered herself: